Chisel Rack

Hi All,
I was wondering if anyone has any images of chisels racks you have made
and are proud of? I am accumulating more and more chisels and want a
better storage system than keeping the original bags and simply hanging
them. I made a rack for my set of marples chisels, but they are pretty
uniform in length and size. I now want something that will easily grow
with my collection, and can house every thing from long thin paring
chisels to shorter wider mortise chisels, and some random japanese
chisels as well.
I like this one alright, but think a better solution must exist.
http://pages.friendlycity.net/~krucker/Shop/ChiselRack.htm
This might be too much to ask from a single rack, but if I can find a
good idea it will make me very happy.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts
Andrew

You could always take the same approach as the ones I saw in Krenov's shop.
Bent wire loops tacked to the wall. Running the edges against the wire when
putting them away should make an impression on the edge.

<snip>
I can think of at least a half dozen ways of doing something like this;
however, can think of at least a dozen questions you must answer first.
Things like:
Do you want all your chisels hanging vertically for easy retrival with
the cutting edges protected?
I would.
Do you want to group like function chisels together by size?
I would.
Is ease of expansion a priority?
I'm 50/50 on this one.
Do you want your chisels visible on a workshop wall or maybe hanging on
the inside of as cabinet door protected from day to day activity?
Might be a nice feature.
Like buying a pick up truck, you can't just buy a chisel rack, you have
to engineer one, then design and build it.
Have fun.
Lew

My racks fit in the doors of a pair of wall cabinets and, to get the
most tools in the space available, they're designed to require
minimum vertical clearance above the tools. Though they
appear stacked, one on another, they're not. Shelf pins hold
each independently so any rack can be removed from the
cabinet without having to move anything else. Take one out
and to the workbench when needed.
Tool racks are a great opportunity to try different types
of joinery, on the cheap since they are made from what
would otherwise be scraps. Low risk project since you're
playing with scraps.
charlie b

I've never got on with the things. Too many tools, too little space.
Any "rack" is a reduction of storage capacity/space consumed, in favour
of better display and access.
So my chisels live in rolls. The cupboard over the bench has four of
them in there (about four dozen in total) and when I use one, I simply
unroll it out flat on the bench. They're as accessible that way as in
any rack and there's simply no way I could rack that many chisels so
close to the bench.
Put your chisels in rolls so that they're a sensible set when unrolled
together and you can do most sorts of work with just one roll out, not
just by putting all the bevels (whatever their size) into one roll.
The perfect chisel roll isn't easy to find either. Mine are home made,
from 2' squares of canvas, but it's hard to find the right canvas. It
mustn't catch the edges when they're being put away.

favour
I asked my wife, a quilter with a lot invested in machinery, etc, to
make me some chisel rolls, and handed her the Lee Valley catalog for
inspiration. The leather ones she ordered do the job quite nicely. :-)
One part of the 'roll' idea which pleases me, is that I can put my
'loanable' tools in one set, and my adult sons can use those, no
questions asked, as long as they come home. And the Lie Nielsen set, in
its French leather roll, is known to be 'owner's use only'.
Patriarch,
who needs to work on a traveling toolchest...

On Fri, 20 May 2005 00:25:26 -0500, Patriarch
I imagine Lee Valley will have used the right stuff, but if you're using
leather for any sort of tool sheath like this, make sure it's vegetable
tanned rather than chrome tanned. (usually brown rather than grey or
blueish). Chrome tanned leather is acidic and will cause rusting
problems.

Always compromises, eh? I ended up with the carving tools in a 3-drawer
toolbox, fitted into plastic foam to protect their edges from each other and
me from the edges. It lives on a shelf in the workshop when not traveling,
right next to the cabinet where the chisels live - in a rack.
Real thing is to have someplace to put them rather than the bench.

It's not worth taking a picture of, but I've got something similar to
the link above. The pegboard is on a wall with exposed framing, so I
mounted some 2x4's between the studs with holes sized for each chisel,
and it works really nicely for me. I only mention the slight
variation with the studs because it saves on pegboard space.

Right now my chisels just hang on hooks on a pegboard, but one solution
I have been dying to try is one of those reconfigurable drawer divider
units. You just snap the pieces together to form compartments of
different sizes. They should fit nicely in my bench, considering it is
made of used kitchen cabinets. Check out
http://www.containerstore.com/browse/Product.jhtml?CATID 3&PRODID`285

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